


and always will until the end

by Nokomis



Category: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Hotel, American Horror Story: Murder House
Genre: (well really discussion of canon-typical violence), Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Post-Canon, because I can't be the only one who wants to see this, serial killers dinner
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 18:23:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5795122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One Devil’s Night, Tate and Violet crash a certain dinner party at the Hotel Cortez.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and always will until the end

**Author's Note:**

> Because drawing dotted lines between the seasons of AHS is super fun, right? There's a little bit of timeline handwavy-ness going on with some of the Implications here. Thanks to Rainpuddle13 for glancing over this for me!

Devil’s Night, Present Day:

 

Walking into the Hotel Cortez is like walking into a tomb. Violet wonders if the living feel their breath catch in their throats and misinterpret it as wonder; all she can feel is a maelstrom of pain and anguish and the overwhelming presence of too many souls.

The lobby has a handful of people in it, all looking as though they’ve stepped out of a runway show. Violet didn’t know people actually _wore_ couture. 

“Jesus, this place is a disaster,” Tate mutters, leaning in too close. He feels solid and safe and it makes her blood boil, and she pushes him lightly away, trying for an outward appearance of flirtatious.

“Don’t get us kicked out before we get in,” Violet hisses. Tate’s got a giant pair of rich-girl sunglasses perched on his nose with absolutely no other changes to his grunge-inspired wardrobe, and somehow he looks as though he belongs here. Violet is wearing the outfit she died in; it felt appropriate.

“We’re not going to get kicked out.” Tate actually sounds happy. Violet glances at him; he’s looking around like a kid in a candy store, as though this place feels like home. 

The walls themselves here don’t feel malevolent, not like the house, but the guests… Violet can feel their eyes on her, can tell that she doesn’t belong.

The woman at the desk hands them a key distractedly; her eyes are stuck on a lovely boy standing near the elevator. Their footsteps echo through the lobby as they head to the elevator. 

“It does look like Dario Argento threw up in here,” Violet admits as they stepped into the elevator. Tate laughs, and for a moment Violet pretends that it’s _before_ , when she thought they were in love. 

Then she takes a measured step to the side so that there’s no contact.

The ride to the sixth floor is both too long and not long enough; Violet isn’t entirely ready for what they’re walking into. The promise she wrung from Tate in exchange for tonight had felt like enough while standing in the bedroom that had seen both of them take the final steps toward death, but now…

Now, she kept remembering the look of absolute despair on Billie Dean’s face as she’d described the night for them. Constance had been standing in the corner, flicking her cigarette carelessly onto the floor as she urged Billie Dean on, and even the months of research into the place, the names, the faces hadn’t quite dimmed their horror.

“Billie Dean said Room 64,” Violet says, trying to steady herself. Now that they’re walking down a hallway that looks like it was ripped straight out of The Shining, a fluttery ball of nervousness settles in her center. She knows what the room will hold, and she knows they can’t hurt her, that she’s already done the worst possible thing to herself, but…

These are the names that haunt the darkness, and she’s about to put faces to them.

“This is so cool,” Tate whispers back. The sunglasses hide his eyes, but she can almost picture how giddy he must look.

“Maybe if you’re qualified for murder-club.” Violet isn’t bitter, precisely, but fear sharpens her tongue. 

Tate’s excitement seems to dim a little. He’s never gloated about his crimes to her, always tearfully admitted his guilt over it, and Violet knows she’s going to see a different side tonight. The side others in the house see when they look at him, the boy who could calmly commit the worst imaginable crimes and then act like nothing had ever happened.

They round a corner and there was Room 64, tucked into its own alcove. 

“I’ll keep my promise,” Tate tells her, eyes glued on the room number like it was the pearly gates. “I won’t kill anyone for the entire year, not even to make you happy.”

She remembers Miguel, wonders briefly if she’d made a mistake when she let him escape, and nods. 

“Good,” she says. It’s not enough to make up for everything Tate’s already done -- she’s not sure anything is -- but it’s a start.

The door to Room 64 swings silently open as they approach, and Tate undergoes another transformation as he enters, somehow diminishing himself to just another teen. 

A teen spirit, Violet thinks wildly, stifling an inappropriate giggle into her sleeve as she follows him inside and hopes she doesn’t regret this. She might already be dead, but that gives her a long time to mull things over, and she’s got enough on her plate already.

The faces inside are familiar, though they don’t immediately notice that there are party crashers. The host -- it has to be James Patrick March, though all Violet can see of him is the back of his head -- is talking grandly to his guests, and the one thing the internet didn’t prepare her for is the grandiose accent that makes March seem somehow larger than life, rather than cartoonish.

They could still leave.

Then Ramirez glances their direction, and elbows Gacy to motion toward them.

One by one the killers turn, with March turning sharply on his heel last, all staring as though no one has ever crashed their party before. Probably no one has; it’s madness. 

“I don’t recall issuing any new invitations this year,” March says, looking down at them imperiously. “Shoo, now.”

“No,” Tate says, soft enough that it doesn’t feel confrontational. “I wanted to meet you.”

“You don’t get to just prance in and meet Mr. March,” Aileen says, draping an arm over March’s shoulders. He shrugs it off, and she laughs. “Gotta earn your dues, kid.”

“We’ve been planning this a while,” Tate says, disregarding Aileen altogether. “Gotta lot of time to kill.”

A flash of interest in March’s eyes; Violet wonders if he can tell they’re ghosts, too. Sometimes it’s impossible, other times it’s all you can feel when another is around. Billie Dean says places like the house or the Hotel Cortez are rare. March might not even know there are others.

“Gotta kill more than time to come to this dinner,” Gacy says, punctuating his statement with a booming laugh. 

Tate is still wearing his rich-girl sunnies; they don’t yet realize what’s so strange about this. Violet herself can’t stop staring at how cruel Tate’s mouth can look on another’s face, or how much larger a presence March projects, unlike the slumped, diminished picture Tate is affecting.

She nudges him. “It’s rude to wear sunglasses inside.”

“Oh, yeah,” Tate says, and tugs them off, tucking them into the neckline of his sweater. “We heard about this from a mutual… well, pain in the ass. The psychic bitch.”

March looks slightly disconcerted; despite all the differences between them, there’s something unnerving about seeing your eyes on another’s face. “Miss Howard was told not to speak of this on pain of death.”

Tate shrugs. 

“I know you,” says the Ten Commandment Killer suddenly, brow furrowed.

“No shit,” says Gacy, looking entirely too interested. “He’s got a familiar look about him.” He glances back at Mr. March.

Mr. March strokes his mustache and says, “I say, boy, where do you come from?”

Tate’s knuckles brush against hers as he moves forward. Violet can see the way his shoulders drop nervously, the way he does when he’s playing at being just another shy, broken teen. He looks soft and vulnerable and heartbreakingly young.

Violet stays back, not wanting to interrupt. Billie Dean had been right; there was something eerie about the similarities between March and Tate. The hair was different, and March’s features were tighter, colder… He looked like a honed blade, in comparison to Tate’s softness. 

But the eyes, that’s where the truth shone bright and obvious. The eyes were the same, though Tate was better at disguising it. But Violet had seen that same darkness in Tate, and she knew exactly what sort of monster they were facing.

“Around,” Tate says. 

Dahmer hesitantly moves into the dining area, clears his throat nervously. Gacy lets out a booming laugh as he says, “Jeffy wants to know if the Pretty Boy is a guest or on the menu.”

“Both, if I had my say,” says Aileen. She catches Violet’s eyes; makes an obscene gesture.

Violet doesn’t bother to respond. Something more important is happening, in the way March is assessing Tate. He walks a wide circle around him, looking him up and down from the dirty, inked-up Converses to the artfully frayed edges of his sweater, and March clicks his tongue. “Shameful, what youth today are attempting to pass off as formalwear. What’s your name, boy?”

“Tate.” The rusty croak of voice comes from the entryway, where the Ten Commandments Killer stands. John Lowe. He forms his words very precisely, and something about him reminds Violet of her father, in the dark days before his death. “Tate Langdon, isn’t it? Your picture was on the wall at the precinct.”

“Mugshot?” says Ramirez, propping his feet up on the table. “Was it a good one?”

Tate never turns away from March. “I was never arrested.”

“We have that in common,” March offers, clapping Tate on the shoulder. They’re of a height, even with Tate’s slumped shoulders. March is what Tate could have been had he grown up, Violet realizes suddenly, all honed confidence and precise leadership. 

“You were never arrested,” John says, “because you were shot half a hundred times by a LAPD SWAT team.”

There’s a subtle shift in the energy of the room, and everyone is looking at Tate with a very different sort of appraisal. 

“Indeed?” March says. “For what crime did the lawmen decide you needed to die by such violence?” The way he says _violence_ sends a chill up Violet’s spine; he relishes it, speaks the word as if it were the name of a precious child. 

Tate shrugs. “Sometimes you just want to go out in a blaze of glory. You know how it is. They were just obliging me.”

Violet doesn’t know Tate as well as she once thought she did, but she knows that any time Constance’s influence slips through, he’s more nervous than he’s letting on.

John lets out a derisive laugh, and moves into the dining room. They form a strange triad in the center of the room, surrounded by the souls who delight the most in the darkness that shrouds the hotel: the shy boy, the hard-eyed cop, the smiling host. And yet…

And yet, Violet knows they’re all three the same type of monster.

“You shot and killed fifteen kids,” John says. “Back in 1994.”

“Damn, son,” Aileen laughs. “All in one go? That’s like eating a whole birthday cake at once! You shoulda _savored_ it.”

Ramirez, Zodiac, Dahmer and Gacy have closed in and Tate is now surrounded on all sides by killers. Violet is seemingly forgotten, and she scoots herself up onto the table, propping her feet up in the seat of a chair to watch the show. Part of her hopes they do terrible things to Tate, things that he deserves after everything he did to her and her family.

Part of her wants to grab his hand and run away from here, from this place that is soaked in death but doesn’t feel like _home_ the way the house does.

Tate’s dropping the scared kid act bit by bit. March still hasn’t said anything. His reaction is clearly everything to Tate, who ignores the rest of the killers with studied casualness.

“Well, well, well,” March says finally. “It seems like you might meet our unique qualifications after all. Though I do prefer it when I have a hand in shaping America’s youth into fine young killers.”

Tate tilts his head. “You mean you don’t realize?”

March does; Violet is almost sure of it. He’s looking at Tate with a hungry sort of fascination, as though he’s searching Tate’s features for the answer to the question that remains unasked.

“I believe it’s time for our meal,” March says finally, turning with a crisp efficiency to take his spot at the head of the table.

The rest of the party guests are growing restless, backing up when it’s apparent that Tate is not destined to be a party favor after all. 

“Damned shame,” Dahmer mutters as he settles into one of the chairs. Violet slides off the table. She doesn’t want to be here anymore, doesn’t like the way her skin crawls as if these monsters could actually do her harm.

Her hard-won deal with Tate seems cheap now, like she didn’t ask for enough to endure this evening.

“And your young lady,” March says, turning and pinning her with a sharp smile. “Is she a guest as well?”

Violet doesn’t want to hear how Tate would describe her. “Only person I killed was myself,” she says glibly. 

“I’m in love with Violet,” Tate explains earnestly, “and I’m trying to win her back.”

“Not gonna happen,” Violet reminds him as she lets him pull out a chair for her.

“Oh, a love story,” says Gacy. “Did he murder you terribly?”

Violet speaks before she’s really thought things through, using the tone that had earned her a dozen detentions, back when she went to school. “I just said I offed myself.”

Tate beams at her, and she has to pull her hand back before he can try to grasp it in misguided teenage solidarity.

“A young lady with fire in her eyes,” March says approvingly. “My own wife has quite the sharp tongue herself.”

March glances at the entrance, as though he expects his estranged wife to appear on command. She doesn’t. The facts about their relationship had been few and far between; mostly just a few dates in March’s background. Violet had done her best to prepare for tonight, but she really hadn’t accounted for how unnerving the whole thing would be.

Zodiac settles into the seat next to her at the table. Violet looks at him curiously. She supposes that there were odd figures in the house, but at least no one chose to be a shadowed anonymous entity. 

Violet manages to avoid being the focus of attention for the rest of the meal, thankfully. By the time the uneaten main course is taken away and dessert is placed in front of them, Tate has undergone another transformation from shy, earnest teenager to one of his more charismatic and manipulative moods. Violet can see shades of the boy she fell in love with when he smiles, but more importantly she sees the dangerous parts that he’d kept carefully hidden from her.

March seems enamored. Keeps calling Tate “My dear boy” in a delightedly startled way, as though he was discovering a bright new connection he didn’t quite understand.

Tate never explains; he clinks his glass with Ramirez and Gacy, he winks at Dahmer and matches Aileen’s bitter sarcasm, and he carefully avoids bringing up why they came here, what he hoped to learn.

March never actually asks how they learned of the meal, and the rest of the dinner guests follow his lead. John is the only one who seems to question their presence, and Violet avoids his gaze.

The conversation twists and turns through gruesome and mundane topics. March’s determined passion about his foolhardy plan -- killing God, seriously -- was enough that Violet knew, suddenly, that he could never find out about Michael. She didn’t quite believe Billie Dean’s assessment of her brother, but she’d looked in his eyes and something in them had frightened her in a way she’d never experienced before, not even with the company she now kept.

She didn’t want to think of what March would make of him, not when he’d managed to turn supposedly normal dark souls into the menagerie around her. Michael was terrifying enough on his own.

And then the meal is over, and March claps his hands. “Thank you, my most esteemed pupils. I trust that you have all had a memorable Devil’s Night.”

There was a bit of grumbling from Gacy, and Dahmer stuttered out, “I never got my t-treat.”

Everyone else -- somewhat wiser, by Violet’s assessment -- thanked March instead. It’s nearly dawn. She can feel the pull of the house, trying to tug her back to where she belongs, but still she stays.

The killers are leaving, one by one. John already left; apparently he has a family sequestered somewhere deep within Hotel Cortez. Violet wonders if they’re dead, if they know what he is. If they’re happy.

Sometimes she feels as though her family dying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and sometimes she thinks that the house has crept into her mind and has only made her think that.

The longer she’s dead, the more she realizes how deeply the house affected her, how responsible it was for her fate.

“You must come back,” March tells Tate. “Next Devil’s Night. Consider this your standing invitation.”

Tate nods. “Thanks. I was wondering… why didn’t you have a victim for them? They seemed to expect it.”

March smiles. “As much as I love to see the light go out of a person’s eyes as they breathe their last… It’s been getting a mite crowded around here.”

“At least the hotel is big,” Tate says. “You stand a chance of avoiding the people you… you know, hurt. I get bitched all the time.”

March’s veneer of geniality drops slightly. “That cuts both ways, most unfortunately. Sharing eternity with the most lovely of spectres isn’t beneficial when she can avoid me so very easily.”

His wife. Dr. Montgomery had said what a lovely creature she had been, but cold. 

“Sometimes people need to be avoided,” Violet says. “Maybe she has good reason.”

Tate looks vaguely like a kicked puppy while March looks thoughtful. “Are you suggesting I attempt to mend fences with my lady of the night?”

“Some fences can’t be mended,” Violet tells him. Her voice stays gentle and unwavering, though she really wants to scream.

“We have forever,” Tate reminds her. “Never say never.”

March smooths his mustache. “What unforgivable thing has this boy done to you, my dear?”

Violet shakes her head; March can’t know about Michael. “It’s between us.” She meets Tate’s eyes; he seems just as reluctant to share as she is. She knows better than to think it’s shame. “It’s almost daybreak.”

March takes her hand and presses a kiss on her knuckles in lieu of a goodbye, though Tate lingers as she walks out the door. She doesn’t hear what they say to each other -- it’s deeply not her business, as curious as she might be -- and she’s nearly to the elevator by the time Tate runs to meet her, breathless with a strangely hopeful light in his eyes.

The elevator opens with a faint _ding_ that reminds Violet of the old movies her mother loved to watch, that Violet had rolled her eyes through and complained that nothing ever happened.

There’s a woman inside, and there’s not a single doubt in Violet’s mind about who this is, not even with the myriad of guests this hotel seems to collect.

The woman -- the Countess-- is old Hollywood glamour blended seamlessly with aristocratic contempt and ethereal otherworldliness. If Violet hadn’t spent so much time being looked down at by Constance Langdon, she might have been intimidated.

The gaze the Countess levels on her is so familiar in its disdain that Violet suddenly remembers Dr. Montgomery’s words, spoken over her shoulder as she’d googled the Hotel Cortez, “Your mother’s stolen babe was hardly Nora’s first.”

Tate glares sullenly up at her from under his curls, and leads Violet into the elevator with a sudden spark of gentlemanly behavior, offering her his arm.

The Countess doesn’t deign to speak; merely averts her eyes from them in a way that makes Violet feel extremely self-conscious about the worn sneakers on her feet and the shapeless clothes that she’s wearing. She could see, suddenly, how a creature like March could be so enamored with a woman with such presence.

Tate keeps his eyes on the Countess for the entire ride, as though he’s memorizing her features. He seems almost disappointed when they reach the lobby and the Countess swans out of the elevator, never so much as acknowledging them.

Perversely, Violet wants to send Constance here, wants to see what would happen if they met. Wants to see if the Countess’s veneer of superiority is hard-won or if it would crumble.

“Hey,” Tate says, voice sounding strangely young as he calls out after the Countess. Her father has explained to her a dozen times how deep-rooted his mother issues are, and Violet wants to stop him, wants to save him from whatever he’s about to do.

But she doesn’t.

The Countess pauses and tilts her head, not quite looking at them, but granting Tate a moment of her attention.

“You shouldn’t have trusted Dr. Montgomery,” Tate says. “Everything in that house is a fucking lie.”

For the first time the Countess looks actually _human_. Startled, she looks at them with her full attention, and seems to register Tate’s features for the first time. 

“It’s true,” Violet says as they step into the lobby. They don’t have any time to stop; the house is drawing them like a lodestone as dawn breaks. They pass the Countess; Tate steps on the hem of her dress with petulant deliberation. 

“See you next Devil’s night!” Tate calls over his shoulder as they leave the lobby. The street outside is devoid of traffic or people, but Violet takes in every detail of the buildings, the cars, the signs of life as they walk down the center of it, hungry for evidence of a world outside the house. 

She glances back over her shoulder at the Hotel Cortez, and it seems like more than one window has a presence in it, watching them go.

Tate starts whistling, suddenly, an upbeat melody that sends shivers up Violet’s spine. She has no doubt he’s going to spend next Devil’s Night here.

She hates whatever it is within her that makes her want to come again, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](nokomiss.tumblr.com).
> 
> (In my mind, a few years later Scarlett and Michael meet, and the cycle starts all over again.)


End file.
